The show that made history by spinning off a sitcom character into a drama. Asner's political antics led to it being cancelled far before its time, but what we got is something to be thankful for.

It was the first place where I saw the late, great Nancy Marchand (best known to most people as Tony Soprano's mom, Livia). She seemed to be a great boss.

Loved Billie and Rossi. What became of those two actors?

I liked this show. Liked the inner workings of a great metropolitan newspaper. Much better than the Ron Howard The Paper movie. I assume the show would be dated if viewed now though. I did see it aired locally a few times about ten years ago and I still liked it, but I think I liked it because it was a show I liked when I was young more than because it was really good.

I think it was really good though. I have a couple of episodes saved on tape, and they really stand up. I suppose some stories might be dated in the sense that they treat particular social issues as new discoveries, whereas TV has pretty well worked them over by now. But the character interactions are still fresh, and the humor still works.

In case anyone is still wondering what happened to the actors who played Billie and Rossi: Linda Kelsey, as I recall, worked sporadically on TV afterward (I seem to recall time off for new motherhood playing a role in this too), her biggest credit being a sitcom Day by Day about running a daycare center. I recall her talking in an interview about Hollywood casting ideas, that she was no longer young enough to be castable. Her last screen credit was a 1997 guest role, after which she moved to Minneapolis and acts in theater there. Robert Walden is still around and working; he was in a movie released just this year, and in a L&O:SVU episode not long ago.

I was so excited to see a DVD link from the Lou Grant page at the IMDB; but it was one of those "not yet available; click and we'll let you know if it is ever made" links.

This show is the epitome of '70's television in the tradition of Quincey, All in the Family and later M*A*S*H. It was preachy, political and condescending.

I did like Mason Adams though. His voice is so distinctive as the guy who sold Smucker's Jelly and Cadbury candy Easter eggs. Other than that, this show was bleh.

I guess "bleh" is in the eye of the beholder because I loved this show. Preachy? Quincy? M*A*S*H? Never would have put those two in the preachy category. Quincy was self-righteous at times but it was such a crap show anyway.
And M*A*S*H still holds up in its humor and compassion. Beautifully written show, as was Lou Grant.

I loved it, too, and never missed an episode. Rossi was my favorite supporting character and I particularly liked the moment when Lou warned him not to be so dedicated to his work that he ended up 'that guy who lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment eating macaroni and cheese' - i.e. Lou.

I also loved Charlie and Mrs. Pynchon [she was, IMHO, a great riff on the Washington Post's Katherine Graham]. I remember fondly an episode in which Mrs. Pynchon dates a multi-millionaire press lord whose M.O. is to swallow up papers and make them conform to his own non-Trib standards. Charlie tries to warn her, in spite of the fact that she's likely to be mad at him, and when she asks him why he came to her when no one else will, he tells the story of the scorpion and the turtle, the one that ends with the turtle stinging the scorpion and as they go to their joint death saying he did it because 'it's my nature'. Then, during the final showdown over the Trib, the nebbish stockholder who's been wined and dined and treated as important by the press lord is told impatiently by his new patron to be quiet, and realizing he's being used, changes his vote and saves the Trib. It's the press lord, of all people, who says a hearty 'good for you!' to the guy.

The social issue episodes weren't all that preachy, IMHO, and some of them were wonderful - they all didn't have happy endings. I loved the realism - there were lots of good arguments about the ethical and business end of things, and no one looked or sounded like a 'Hollywood' reporter. And the switch in tone from "Mary Tyler Moore"'s Lou to "Lou Grant"'s Lou was handled amazingly well.

Barnard Hughes, who just died, won an Emmy for playing a judge slipping into senility... I'd love to see this series again.

There were so many wonderful episodes (with never a bit of preachiness:

Physical: Lou checks into the hospital, while a copy guy (Thomas Carter, now a major director) tries to learn how to be a writer.

Conflict: Rossi gets appointed the in-house critic of the paper's ethics, and he finds (and writes about) conflicts of interest for everyone. This contains a classic Lou / Mrs. Pynchon shouting match, and as it happens was the first one I saw.

Hit: Rossi helps a woman investigate her son's hit-and-run death from years ago. (Allyn Ann McLerie is remarkable in this one.)

Marathon: One day in the office, with Michael Warren as an intern.

Andrew: A two-parter about Donovan's mentally disturbed cousin. (Poor Donovan -- he got the brunt of so many "problem relative" stories.) Great acting by Bruce Davison and Barbara Barrie.

Hollywood: Lou narrates a film noir about his inadvertent solving of a decades-old Hollywood murder.

Lou: A stressful day at the office.

Blackout: A power failure just as the paper goes to press.

Nightside: A look at the night shift.

Catch: Billie falls in love with the baseball player she's writing about. (Later in the series, she marries him.)

Double-Cross: A gold cross found in a time capsule. My own personal favorite.

And that's just a small sampling.

I loved this show (and I love the quote, even though it's from the "other" Lou Grant). The guest-star roster was stellar indeed (plenty of classic MTM actors, of course--man, they produced a lot of good shows), and the regulars weren't too pretty to live, which was nice. Yes, it did some issues stuff that wasn't exactly light-handed, and some of it dates because it was pushing the subject envelope for its time (a sympathetic gay character--a cop, yet), but it was classy stuff. I still quote Mrs. Pynchon for my students when they're thinking about paper topics. She told Lou to write a piece about "The Changing Role of the City Desk." When Lou said it hadn't changed all that much, she said, "Fine. Make it 'The Unchanging Role of the City Desk.'"

I'm glad that there's some indication it might be coming out on DVD. Other MTM shows are starting to come out, so it would fit right in.

I loved this show too. It was in reruns a few years ago. On A&E I think. It was definitely an underrated classic. It led to my lifelong interest in journalism and to my career choice. I do think that there was a huge disconnect between the two Lou's however.

wow, just stumbled across this thread. I loved this show. Rossi was my favorite. How I miss Nancy Marchand.....she was wonderful.

Hey, didn't Robert Walden go on to star in a show called 'Brothers' over on Showtime??

Yep, he did. And the only reason I know this was because I had enough of a crush on him to keep an eye on what he did post-LG. I didn't even get cable!


Doesn't that end with people in the newsroom secretly enrolling Rossi in every organization under the sun, including, I think, the Leif Garret Fan Club? (If not Leif Garret, some other teen hearthrob of the time.) It's interesting how the same ethical dilemmas the Trib wrestled with then are still issues today. The Washington Post (and I'm still half-convinced the Trib characters were based on "All the President's Men") holds regular on-line chats with its writers, and they talk a lot about conflicts of interest. Some of the political writers don't even vote because they think selecting a candidate indicates bias. Most don't go that far, though.

I saw a bit more continuity in Lou's character(s)than you did, paved paradise. I still remember an episode where Billie had Lou over for dinner, along with the guy she was dating. She didn't have your typical dining room and chairs; instead, it was a low table and everybody sat on stacked big cushions. Comes time to leave, and Lou offers "guy" a ride home. Seems he's staying. Lou heaves a huge "I'm old and out of it" sigh and struggles to get off those damned cushions and stand up. The tone of voice, the expression, the body language--all of it was pure Lous Grant from MTM, but it fit in perfectly with the Lou we knew from the Trib.

Oh, and me too, with the career choice thing! I've done much more broadcast than print work in my time, but I'm still amazed at how right they got things on that show. Very little of that macabre sense of humor that flourishes in real newsrooms, but that's definitely a kind of "you had to be there" humor that I don't think would translate very well, anyway.

The tone of Lou Grant's character didn't change much from MTM to Lou Grant, I didn't think.

To add to the list of episodes/issues, there was one that had to do with Japanese-Americans having been forcibly removed from their homes on the West Coast during World War II and Mr Pynchon having profited from that in some way.

There was another about Vietnam veterans and the difficulties many of them were having. Animal referred to Lou the WWII vet as a member of the Class of '46. Apparently most (or many) WWII soldiers were discharged in 1946.

Aw, my favorite show of all time. I stopped buying Kimberly Clark products for about twenty years as a protest. (They were the main sponsor and it was rumored that they didn't care for Ed Asner's political beliefs and that was why they pulled the plug.)

I have always felt cheated that we didn't get a series finale episode, although the actual last episode was pretty good in that regard. But I still wanted a real finale, and maybe some postscripts to tell us what happened to Mrs. Pynchon and Joe and Billie and Charlie. And Lou, of course. Now it's too late. No Mrs. Pynchon. No Charlie. They better do that DVD if they're going to do it, before we lose Ed Asner, too.

When I was in college in central Illinois, I was so excited when the Tolono Busy Bees (I don't know to this day what sort of organization that was) called me out of the blue to do a survey on favorite TV shows. I was excited because I'd been waiting for somebody to ask me so I could say "Lou Grant" with enthusiasm.

Votes for 1) Hollywood and 2) Double Cross as my favorite episodes, although I would need to see them again to see if I still think so.

Good stuff.

I remember that episode D.C. I believe that the boyfriend was played by the late Michael Zaslow, best known for his soap work and for his advocacy work for ALS.

oops double post!

Lou Grant had one of the most awesome opening credits, ever. It showed all the different stages of a newspaper being printed (from the tree it came from to the newspaper going inside a birdcage.)

I watched the series on A&E in circa 1993-1994. It seemed like the newspaper staff were always dealing with a thoughtful ethical dilemma of some sort. I remember the time they didn't know whether or not to publish the names of some men who were killed in a fire at a gay nightclub. They were afraid that some of the men might have been closeted and didn't want to out them.

Anyhow, I hope Lou and Rhoda comes out on DVD one of these days.

arlykeeno, I even wrote to CBS to complain about the cancellation. I received the reply they probably sent all such complainers, saying that of course it had nothing to do with Mr. Asner, and every series has a "life," and this one had come to its natural end, and so on.

I remember (because I was moving to the East Coast, and I managed to see it anyway mid-move,) that they held back two episodes from the last season, and aired them in August as a sort of farewell to the series, in lieu of a real finale. First the one where Lou was shot (though it ended up being more about a cop's reaction to having shot and killed the perp), and finally "Charlie" as a kind of finale. That's the one centered on Charlie Hume and how thankless his job is, getting flak from everyone about their assignments (because he has to balance conflicting needs that they don't know about), having to be a disciplinarian (against his nature), taking heat from both above and below, and finally listening to employees' personal problems (on which we fade out). The online episode guide dislikes this one because all the others come off as jerks in it, but I disagree -- it's just a day in the life of an administrator (why I'd never be one). And the big pullback at the end, as Donovan pours his troubles out to Charlie, and we can't hear him any more but we see the big mostly empty newsroom at night, served as a kind of "life goes on" ending... just another day at the Trib, and they'll all be back tomorrow. (I always wonder if, while holding this episode back over the summer after the cancellation, they reshot the final scene in this way, to give it a bigger impact as a real ending.)

It's true, they've missed their chance at commentary with some of the cast, though we could still get Ed A -- and Linda Kelsey (if they fly her in from Minneapolis) and Robert Walden and Jack Bannon. And for the final season, Lance Guest, no longer a kid straight out of UCLA. It's a shame we won't have Nancy Marchand's acerbic reactions, though. She was always inclined to speak her mind. I recall her TV Guide interview, in which she said that every actor looks forward to a job with 3 benefits (I wish I could remember them now: good pay, good audience, a good role?) and then cryptically added "two out of three ain't bad." Or when she said that, in trying to be evenhanded in its attitude, the show sometimes avoided having a mind, as in the last-season show about those who had been affected by the 1950s blacklists and those who had informed on them, and "It was all so civilized I wanted to puke." What a great lady.

"Yes, I'm calling from the Trib. I'd like to confirm a report... I've been getting the runaround for two hours here. I'm on deadline!... Can you tell me approximately how much money is involved. Is it over a thousand dollars?"

I remember one episode where Animal (Daryl) had to confront a woman who stalked him, and it went back to his serving in Viet Nam; and another where Julie Kavner (another MTM alum) played a battered wife with a power that just knocked me out. And, at some point, didn't Lou end up with his grandchild (an infant) living with him? I also recall he had surgery for thyroid cancer, and I particularly remember an episode where they were holding the front page to see if a plane landed safely or crashed, and Charlie's daughter was on it.

I also ended up in a journalism career because of this show (at two now defunt papers) and later on, got to know Mason Adams (Charlie) a bit when he did theater in New York. He was a VERY good actor.

Resurrecting an old, old thread to post this Associated Press story on Lou Grant. Among the mentions -- it was one of the first "dramedies" and also introduced the concept of a drama with an ensemble cast.

And I still long to buy a white Beetle convertible, just because Billie Newman had one.

But surely there were dramas with ensemble casts before? I mean, Lou Grant did have an unusually good one, but thinking of shows from Mission Impossible through The Waltons and many more... I guess it depends on their definition. I'd love to know just what they meant by the distinction.

Every time this thread revives, I find myself hoping that it's news about a DVD release. It so deserves one.

[database error, sorry!]

Woo hoo! It may not be DVD, but hulu.com unexpectedly offers all of Season 1 for free and legal viewing. I'm going to just start at the beginning and watch them all.

I watched and enjoyed this show many years ago. A couple of bits that stuck in my mind:

An episode in which Rossi was away on business (Hawaii?) and asked Grant to keep an eye on his house. There was a big storm with mud slides, characters in danger. Line at the end: "You're gonna need new house numbers."

An episode in which Grant worked night shift. He had trouble with his computer and called tech support. The woman tech fixed the problem quickly with a nonstandard tool (hairpin?). Grant: "I wish you worked days." Tech: "Nah, they make you use screwdrivers."

The American Life Channel airs Lou Grant on Wednesday nights. Never heard of this channel until the day my cable company added it. It's been great seeing LG again after so many years. If it was on A&E in the early 90's I missed it, and hadn't seen it since it aired originally. It really stands the test of time.

Even though I enjoyed the show when it was on and I had just graduated from high school, it didn't encourage me to go into journalism. For the last 10 years, however, I've been a newspaper editor, so what goes around comes around, I guess. It must have taken an extraordinary amount of work to get out a daily paper in the pre-computer days. It's amusing watching Billie and Rossi banging out stories on manual typewriters!

Yes, it is funny from our present point of view. But one of the great things about the series is that they moved to terminals right at the time that actual newsrooms were doing that (I saw more than one reviewer comment approvingly on this). At the start of the third (?) season, there they are for the reporters. But if I remember right, the paper as a whole was still done the old-fashioned way (and I seem to recall that that was true to life right then too).

How I wish we got American Life here. Our cable company is always the last to add things.

Rinaldo, you can see "Lou Grant" on Hulu.com (that's the network created on-line streaming website, so it's even legal). I re-watched the pilot recently, and it was a hoot to see those characters for the first time -- with the exception of Billie. I think she showed up midway through the first season, didn't she?

I know, inasmuch as I mentioned it 3 posts up. (Grin -- couldn't resist.)

Billie Newman showed up earlier than one might think: in the fourth episode. And Carla Mardigian was out, without explanation within the story (I guess we just never happened to bump into her again, like several vanished characters on The West Wing?). Rebecca Balding did play her too cutesy and girly, but that's also the way the part was written; I've never seen a full explanation, but I would think the producers realized quickly that they needed a different attitude in that slot, and decided to reboot. But it sure was quick! Episode 4 would have been written and cast before the series had even started airing.

We did get a full explanation for the arrival of Billie at any rate, almost as if the replacement had been planned from the beginning (which can't have been the case): she had been writing for the "women's section" all along, and did so well on assignment for Lou in 1.4 that he kept her on.

Hulu.com has now added Season 2.

And I've been re-watching favorite episodes that I hadn't seen for many years.

"Hit": Allyn Ann McLerie (who later played Billie Newman's mother) investigating her son's hit-and-run death from years ago, reluctantly assisted by Rossi.

"Conflict": The Trib starts a column on conflicts of interest. Rossi takes the job, which makes him even more hated by everyone else on the paper.

"Marathon": A long day at the office covering a breaking story into the late evening, with a new intern (Michael Warren) on the job.

And many more. What a great series!

Did Michael Warren have hair? No, never mind, I'll just run over to Hulu and check it out myself....

Hey, this is the same year he was still passing for a high-school dropout (or trying to) on The White Shadow. And Hill Street Blues, during all 7 years of which he kept his hairpiece going, was still to come!

Two episodes come to mind:

In great bit of continuity from MTM, Mary's Aunt Flo shows up and Billie travels with her on a campaign bus following a candidate. Aunt Flo even tells Billie that Lou once proposed to her.

Charlie's son is a Hare Krishna.

Been (re)watching some of these up on hulu.com. 2 whole seasons! Whoo-hooo!

The pilot is especially interesting. There's actually a tiny vestige of the MTM Show Lou in his initial dealings with people at the paper.


Yeah. That's actually amusing. It's like... lets take this boring stock cutesey girl and replace her with the more interesting "perky" girl.


True. But they probably knew just for the Pilot that she wasn't working out. They just took their time phasing her out. You could actually tell, since Rossi got used a lot more in Episodes 2 and 3 than in the Pilot.

And Rebecca Balding immediately moved on to Soap and had Billy Crystal's baby.

So TudorQueen, did you ever go check out Michael Warren and his episode?

Just discovered that this show is on Hulu (what, late technology adopter, me??). It's still very watchable and surprisingly nuanced for 1977. I think it's the blend of the Very Serious treatment of issues and the humorous treatment of the characters that made it so appealing. Now it's a reminder of the world before ubiquitous cellphones....

Of course I'm biased: this was my last beloved show before taking off for school and abandoning television for several years.